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What Is the 20% Project in Education?

The story of the 20% Project goes back nearly a century.

In 1923, while at an auto body shop in St. Paul, Minnesota, 3M engineer Richard Drew noticed a car painter struggling with tape that ineffectively kept paint from bleeding into areas where it didn’t belong. Although 3M was primarily an abrasives manufacturer, Drew was sure that the company could create a product to solve that problem.

His commitment to creating a superior ‘masking tape’ earned him a warning from 3M’s then-vice president, William McKnight: He should confine his efforts to sandpaper-related projects. Drew continued the project in his spare time, eventually pairing cabinetmaker’s glue with treated crepe paper to create what we now call Scotch TM tape.

As a result, McKnight, who went on to become 3M’s president, incorporated ‘The 15 Percent Rule’ into his core management principles. It empowers 3M employees to use up to 15% of their time to pursue seemingly out-of-left-field ideas about which they’re passionate. McKnight later wrote, “Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it's essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.” 1

Building on McKnight’s approach, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin implemented a strategy called ‘20% time.’ In the company’s 2004 initial public offering letter, they noted, “We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner.” 2 Developments resulting from the so-called 20% Project include Gmail, Google News, and the Google Teacher Academy. 3

Today, educators are utilizing the 20% Project in their classrooms, hoping that it fosters creativity, innovation, and intrinsic motivation 4 . Read on to explore how the 20% Project works in education.

Creating Autonomous Learners

“Our students' workplaces will be places with teams at tables, not individuals in cubicles,” she says. “They will be asked to be innovative and create the next tool, not to push bureaucratic paper. We must teach them how to think on their own without being told what to do.” 3

She promotes 20% time as an effective means of teaching autonomy. In it, students are afforded 20% of class time, or one hour per week, to work on and explore one topic of their choosing.

The 20% Project and the Genius Hour

20% Project ideas are as varied as the students who present them, with past projects including these, among many others: 5

• Write a novel / children's book / book of original poems
• Learn my family's recipes and cook with my grandmother / aunt / mother
• Create, market, and sell protein drinks
• Raise money for schools in Afghanistan
• Learn how to fix my car: oil, tires, filters, etc.
• Invent an iPhone charger that works using kinetic energy
• Run a marathon
• Construct a computer

A less structured use of 20% time is known as Genius Hour, which gives students one hour each week to work on any learning goal. There is no formalized project involved, and the outcome is largely dependent on the teacher’s chosen requirements. Students learn how to learn autonomously, motivated by working on topics that interest them. Petty relates these goals to Genius Hour endeavors: 6

• Master: practice a skill
• Create: use your imagination
• Learn: gain knowledge about something
• Innovate: solve a problem
• Produce: make something
• Serve: do any of the above for someone else

Performance Goals and Learning Goals

“She had created a performance goal, not a learning goal. Had I known better at the time, I would have prompted her to study how to take two minutes off her mile—a learning goal.” 3

The student’s project would have been much productive, Petty notes, had it involved these steps:

• Create a workout for the next week
• Learn what kind of workout she should be creating
• Evaluate what worked and what didn't from the previous week's workout
• Examine the type of diet that would be ideal for her situation

Widespread, Long-Term Benefits

He sees four groups of people benefitting from this practice: 7

“I've never received a better response from my students than when we did 20% time. We give our students a voice in their own learning path and allow them to go into depth in subjects that we may skim over in our curriculum.”

“Great teachers inspire and make a difference, but great classrooms have students inspiring each other.”

Juliani praises the use of 20% time for bringing his classes together in environments where everyone learns each other’s true interests and passions. Together, he says, they overcome the fear of failure. “We cheered for each other during presentations,” he says, “and picked each other up when things didn't go as planned.”

He sees long-term advantages to using 20% time, as doing so allows him “to ‘teach above the test.’ My students finally understood that learning doesn't start or end with schooling.”

According to Juliani, 20% time makes “success something tangible. It drives [students’] hidden passions to the surface and reinvigorates conversation about purpose in their lives.”

He recalls a parent of one of his students saying, ‘I always knew my daughter liked design and fashion magazines. When she came home making and creating her own clothes, I was shocked. I went to the store with her to pick out patterns, helped her sew and actually make a few outfits!’

Administrators

While lamenting that administrators can get buried in numbers (test scores, graduation rates, and so on), Juliani believes that 20% Projects “bring us back to why we got into education in the first place: to make a difference. My principal said [the 20% and Genius Hour projects] were the best presentations she ever saw—not because of the content, but because of the conviction the students had for their work.”

Use your time to its best possible advantage.

Prepare for your successful education career in the University of Kansas School of Education and Human Sciences. Learn to engage students of all ages in our Department of Curriculum and Teaching , share your gifts with students with disabilities in our Department of Special Education , or keep motivation strong in instructional teams in our Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. We offer online master’s degrees, graduate certificates and licensure endorsement programs , and our admissions advisors are here to answer your questions. Get in touch with us today.

1. Retrieved on April 20, 2021 from aem.org/news/giving-employees-permission-to-fail-is-a-formula-for-innovation-at-3m 2. Retrieved on April 20, 2021 from businessinsider.com/google-20-percent-time-policy-2015-4 3. Retrieved on April 20, 2021 from 20timeineducation.com/home 4. Retrieved on April 20, 2021 from thetechclassroom.com/20-project/what-is-the-20-project-in-education 5. Retrieved on April 20, 2021 from 20timeineducation.com/20-project/20-time-ideas 6. Retrieved on April 20, 2021 from 20timeineducation.com/genius-hour-20-time/20-community 7. Retrieved on April 20, 2021 from edutopia.org/blog/20-percent-time-a-j-juliani

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20% Project

What is it?

Students will choose one learning goal/project to study and implement over the course of an extended period of time- usually one semester or an entire school year. Many teachers encourage students to choose a service project. Whatever the project is, students learn about one thing all year.

There is a big difference between a learning goal and a performance goal. Example: I had a student who wanted to shave two minutes off her mile. She trained all semeseter- however, what was she doing during the 20-Time hour in my class? Nothing. Mostly bugging other students as they were working. She had created a perfomance goal, not a learning goal. Had I known better at the time, I would have prompted her to study how to take two minutes off her mile- a learning goal. Create a workout for the next week. Learn what kind of workout she should be creating. Evaluating what worked and what didn't from the previous week's workout. Examining the type of diet that would be ideal for her situation. You'll want to guide students who choose performance goals into creating learning goals.

The Process:

Green: Students choose a goal and backwards plan from the date of the finale (a Ted-style presenation about their learning process) to the present.

Yellow: 6 weeks into the project, students present their idea to the community. By announcing what they are doing to the public, it holds them more accountable.

Brown: The end project, a Ted-style speech in which they reflect on the learning that happened throughout the project.

Orange: Each week, at the end of the hour students reflect via blog, journal, etc on what they learned in the hour and what their next steps are for the following week.

Check out the links below for my own reflections on each stage of the process.

Preparation for the Teacher : A quick write-up about what you need to do to prepare for this project.

Introducing 20 Time to Your Class : How to introduce, what to say and not to say.

Blogging: The essential researching and reflection tool for your students.

The Pitch: The event your students will use to publicly announce their project, holding them accountable to everyone.

Conferencing: Why and when you should do it.

Final Presentation: The final graded reflective presentation.

The Community

Click here to see the information to join an amazing community of educators who are using 20-Time in their classrooms.

Why “20% Time” Is Good for Schools

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Have you ever met an adult who doesn't really love what they do, but just goes through the motions in their job and everyday life? Have you spoken with men and women who constantly complain, showing no visible passion for anything in the world? I'm sure that, like me, you have met those people. I've also seen the making of these adults in schools across our country: students who are consistently being "prepared" for the next test, assessment, or grade level . . . only to find out after graduation that they don't really know what they are passionate about. These are the same students who are never allowed to learn what they want in school. Forced down a curriculum path that we believe is "best for them," they discover it is a path that offers very little choice in subject matter and learning outcomes.

Enter 20% time.

What 20% time allows students to do is pick their own project and learning outcomes, while still hitting all the standards and skills for their grade level. In fact, these students often go "above and beyond" their standards by reaching for a greater depth of knowledge than most curriculum tends to allow. The idea for 20% time in schools comes from Google's own 20% policy, where employees are given twenty percent of their time to work and innovate on something else besides their current project. It's been very successful in business practice, and now we can say that it has been wildly successful in education practice.

With 20% time, we can solve one society’s biggest problems by giving students a purpose for learning and a conduit for their passions and interests. If you listen to Sir Ken Robinson or Daniel Pink talk, you'll discover this is an issue that starts with schooling. We spend 14,256 hours in school between kindergarten and graduation. If we can't find a time for students to have some choice in their learning, then what are we doing with all those hours? There are many in education who are questioning "why 20% time would be good for schools," so I've made it easy for each stakeholder to see the benefits.

It starts with the students. They are the reason we teach, and the future of our world. My daughter is four years old, and soon to be going through our public school system. I want her generation to have opportunities to explore, analyze and create projects that have unique meaning to each of them. Instead of answering a multiple choice test on The Great Gatsby , why can't my daughter have the opportunity to write, collaborate, sing and produce a song that explains in detail the major themes of the story. Through 20% time, we give our students a voice in their own learning path, and allow them to go into depth in subjects that we may skim over in our curriculum.

We've got a tough but extremely rewarding job. Great teachers inspire and make a difference, but great classrooms have students inspiring each other. I've never received a better response from my students than when we did 20% time. Our class came together and learned everyone's true interests and passions. We got over the fear of failing together. We cheered for each other during presentations, and picked each other up when things didn't go as planned. We had conversations about standards, skills and learning goals. Using 20% time allowed me to " teach above the test ," and my students finally understood that learning doesn't start or end with schooling.

Remember that conversation starter, "What'd you do in school today?" It will lead to an actual conversation during 20% time projects! I talked to a parent (who is also an elementary teacher) just last week about her daughter's experience with Genius Hour . She said, "I always knew my daughter liked design and fashion magazines, but what girl doesn't? When she came home making and creating her own clothes, I was shocked. I went to the store with her to pick out patterns, helped her sew, and actually make a few outfits!" We want our children to be successful. Sometimes we equate that with an "A" on a test. But what 20% time does is make success something tangible. It drives their hidden passions to the surface, and reinvigorates conversation about purpose in their lives.

Administrators

Go watch the project presentations. When you see a tenth grader try to "clone a carnivorous plant," or a ninth grader learn sign language to communicate with her deaf younger cousin, or a fourth grader produce his own movie, then you'll know why 20% rocks. Sometimes as administrators, we can get lost in the numbers (test scores, graduation rates, etc), but 20% time and Genius Hour projects bring us back to why we got into education in the first place: to make a difference. My principal said those were the best presentations she ever saw -- not because of the content, but because of the conviction the students had for their work. As an administrator, it is important to lead through support. Let your students and teachers make you proud by supporting these types of inquiry-based experiences.

Finally, take a minute to look at all of the great projects students have done in the past year or two during 20% time and Genius Hour. The research backs experiential learning and user-generated education , but the projects show what research cannot: the passion and purpose of our students!

What is the 20% Project in Education?

Inspire drive, creativity and innovation in the classroom with the 20% project.

Daniel Pink asks us to find what drives us. Sir Ken Robinson asks us to inspire creativity in students. The latest in education is asking us to find essential questions for students.

How? One way is to institute a 20% project in class.

3M started it in the 1950’s with their 15% project. The result? Post-its and masking tape! Google is credited for making the 20% project what it is today. They asked their employees to spend 20% of their time at work to work on a pet project…a project that their job description didn’t cover. As a result of the 20% project at Google, we now have Gmail, AdSense, and Google News. Innovative ideas and projects are allowed to flourish and/or fail without the bureaucracy of committees and budgets.

Several educators today are extending the ideas of the 20% into their own classrooms with the hope that the project fosters creativity, innovation, and intrinsic motivation. And why not? With the CCS around the corner, cross-curricular skills will be more important than ever.

In education the 20% project is a little different for each teacher. There seems to be a divide between teachers who want to give complete autonomy and those who give a little more frontloading before and a little more guidance during.

With autonomy, students are encouraged to seek out their own topics, create their own timelines, research their own products and complete them. The pro for autonomy is that students don’t really see a list of possible ideas and then limit their ideas to that list. They have a little more unmanipulated freedom to think of a new project. Teachers who have tried this method find that they add a few more expectations the next year. I would encourage you to scroll to the bottom of this article and access my Evernote folder with various articles related to the 20% project through Google and teachers who have tried it in their classrooms.

Kevin Brookhouser has a great write-up of his 20% project on his blog: I Teach. I Think. His project ideas include:

• build a tutoring network of high school students helping middle school students
• design a complex videogame map using Valve’s SDK
• start a business selling originally designed t-shirts and accessories
• launch a web-design start-up for local organizations and businesses
• write a graphic novel
• make a stop-motion animated movie for a scene in Macbeth
• write a backpacking guide for teenage girls
• interview senior citizens and document their history
• record and produce a full-length album

I introduce the project in the Explore-Flip/Expain/Apply method. I begin by letting students know they will be working on a 20% project in class throughout the year and then challenge them to do some research on what a 20% project is. I allow them to discuss the ins and outs and then discuss my parameters for the project with them.

I’ve researched several write-ups of educational 20% projects and pieced together suggestions from them. The following are my guidelines:

• Decide carefully. If you choose a small group, you will have to compromise with your group and deal with other personalities. If you work alone, you have complete autonomy but you are responsible for the outcome.
• Is this person a worker or floater?
• Can I get along with this person for the entire semester?
• Is this person going to keep on track or distract me?
• This is not about hanging out with friends,but making something really cool.
• If you are stuck, do some research on other educational 20% projects and take another look at what Google has done.
• You must produce a product.
• Write up a proposal and pitch* it to the rest of the class that includes a purpose, audience, timeline, and resources you will need to complete the project. You will present your pitch in a "science-fair"-type poster session in front of other students, teachers, and community members.
• Choose an adult to be your official mentor. I am an English teacher, I do not have a lot of experience with some of the projects you might choose.
• Reflect on the process each week on the class wiki or personal blog.
• If, at any moment, you feel lost, overwhelmed, or uninspired, you must set a meeting with me to find a solution.
• At the end of the year, you will present your project and reflect on the process in a five-minute TED-style talk.
• Failure is an option. Simply learning from your mistakes teaches you a lot.

I introduce this project in the first week of school and let them know their proposal presentations* are due 5 weeks later (mid-October). They have October, November, December, and January to work on the projects (approx. 17 total class periods to work on it). Their final presentations are part of their 1st semester final exam.

My students are 12th grade college-prep level students. There are about 80 of them total. However, I adapted this project from Troy Cockrum who teaches middle school language arts.

Assessment:

I do not grade the actual 20% Project. The suggested literature below suggests that grading projects like this is actually counter-productive. Instead, I grade the proposal/pitch project and the presentation at the end of the project. See rubrics below.

* Resources:

Electronic Folders:

1. 20% Project Evernote Folder: Collation of articles on the web about Google, 3M, education’s implementation of the 20% Project

2. 20% Evernote Folder: Lesson Plans, Worksheets, and Rubrics

My Own Implementation Reflections:

Week Three Reflection

Project Idea Pitch: Public Poster Session (Week 5)

More to Come as We Progress Through the Year

Suggested Reading:

1. Daniel Pink: Drive

2. Tony Wagner: Creating Innovators

3. Sir Ken Robinson: The Element